lenient
adjective
Did you know?
If you’ve ever had a peaceful, easy feeling—perhaps brought on by someone who you know won’t let you down—then you’ll have no problem understanding the earliest meaning of lenient. When it entered English in the mid-1600s, lenient described something soothing—such as a medication—that relieved pain or stress, or otherwise enabled someone to take it easy. For a brief window of time it was even used as a noun, referring to any of various ointments and balms that help heal wounds in the long run. Lenient comes from the Latin verb lenire, meaning “to soften or soothe,” which in turn comes from the adjective lenis, meaning “soft or mild.” The “soothing or easing” sense of lenient is still in use today, but English speakers are more likely to apply it to someone who is lax with the rules (as in “a lenient professor”), who doesn’t mind when someone acts like a certain kind of fool or takes it to the limit one more time.
Examples of lenient in a Sentence
Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Times Book Review, 16 July 1989
He could trust himself, he said … to be more lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself; his danger, he said … would be rather in the direction of being too indulgent …
—Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out.
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
a teacher who is lenient with students who have misbehaved
Many people felt that the punishment was too lenient.
Jesse Bedayn, Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 2026
The sentence Desouza received is substantially lighter than the eight years sought by prosecutors and also much more lenient than the sentences in other local cases of neonaticide, which refers to the crime of killing a baby less than 24 hours after it is born.
—Shira Moolten, Sun Sentinel, 6 Feb. 2026
Family members of the deceased said the agreements were too lenient.
—Maria Braganini, CBS News, 6 Feb. 2026
Epstein’s lenient plea deal with federal prosecutors was the subject of the Miami Herald’s 2018 ‘Perversion of Justice’ series.
—Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald, 5 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for lenient
Cite this Entry
“Lenient.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lenient. Accessed 14 Feb. 2026.
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